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Flash droughts are a recently recognized type of extreme event distinguished by sudden onset and rapid intensification of drought conditions with severe impacts. They unfold on subseasonal-to-seasonal timescales (weeks to months), presenting a new challenge for the surge of interest in improving subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. Here we discuss existing prediction capability for flash droughts and what is needed to establish their predictability. We place them in the context of synoptic to centennial phenomena, consider how they could be incorporated into early warning systems and risk management, and propose two definitions. The growing awareness that flash droughts involve particular processes and severe impacts, and probably a climate change dimension, makes them a compelling frontier for research, monitoring and prediction.Flash droughts, which develop over the course of weeks, are difficult to forecast given the current state of subseasonal-to-seasonal prediction. This Perspective offers operational and research definitions, places them in the broader context of climate and suggests avenues for future research.

Climate data are dramatically increasing in volume and complexity, just as the users of these data in the scientific community and the public are rapidly increasing in number. A new paradigm of more open, user-friendly data access is needed to ensure that society can reduce vulnerability to climate variability and change, while at the same time exploiting opportunities that will occur.

During the last deglaciation, wetter conditions developed abruptly ∼14,700 years ago in southeastern equatorial and northern Africa and continued into the Holocene. Explaining the abrupt onset and hemispheric coherence of this early African Humid Period is challenging due to opposing seasonal insolation patterns. In this work, we use a transient simulation with a climate model that provides a mechanistic understanding of deglacial tropical African precipitation changes. Our results show that meltwater-induced reduction in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) during the early deglaciation suppressed precipitation in both regions. Once the AMOC reestablished, wetter conditions developed north of the equator in response to high summer insolation and increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, whereas wetter conditions south of the equator were a response primarily to the GHG increase.

A Community Climate System Model, Version 3 (CCSM3) simulation for 125 ka during the Last Interglacial (LIG) is compared to two recent proxy reconstructions to evaluate surface temperature changes from modern times. The dominant forcing change from modern, the orbital forcing, modified the incoming solar insolation at the top of the atmosphere, resulting in large positive anomalies in boreal summer. Greenhouse gas concentrations are similar to those of the pre-industrial (PI) Holocene. CCSM3 simulates an enhanced seasonal cycle over the Northern Hemisphere continents with warming most developed during boreal summer. In addition, year-round warming over the North Atlantic is associated with a seasonal memory of sea ice retreat in CCSM3, which extends the effects of positive summer insolation anomalies on the high-latitude oceans to winter months. The simulated Arctic terrestrial annual warming, though, is much less than the observational evidence, suggesting either missing feedbacks in the simulation and/or interpretation of the proxies. Over Antarctica, CCSM3 cannot reproduce the large LIG warming recorded by the Antarctic ice cores, even with simulations designed to consider observed evidence of early LIG warmth in Southern Ocean and Antarctica records and the possible disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Comparisons with a HadCM3 simulation indicate that sea ice is important for understanding model polar responses. Overall, the models simulate little global annual surface temperature change, while the proxy reconstructions suggest a global annual warming at LIG (as compared to the PI Holocene) of approximately 1°C, though with possible spatial sampling biases. The CCSM3 SRES B1 (low scenario) future projections suggest high-latitude warmth similar to that reconstructed for the LIG may be exceeded before the end of this century.

A compilation of paleoceanographic data and a coupled atmosphere‐ocean climate model were used to examine global ocean surface temperatures of the Last Interglacial (LIG) period, and to produce the first quantitative estimate of the role that ocean thermal expansion likely played in driving sea level rise above present day during the LIG. Our analysis of the paleoclimatic data suggests a peak LIG global sea surface temperature (SST) warming of 0.7 ± 0.6°C compared to the late Holocene. Our LIG climate model simulation suggests a slight cooling of global average SST relative to preindustrial conditions (ΔSST = −0.4°C), with a reduction in atmospheric water vapor in the Southern Hemisphere driven by a northward shift of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, and substantially reduced seasonality in the Southern Hemisphere. Taken together, the model and paleoceanographic data imply a minimal contribution of ocean thermal expansion to LIG sea level rise above present day. Uncertainty remains, but it seems unlikely that thermosteric sea level rise exceeded 0.4 ± 0.3 m during the LIG. This constraint, along with estimates of the sea level contributions from the Greenland Ice Sheet, glaciers and ice caps, implies that 4.1 to 5.8 m of sea level rise during the Last Interglacial period was derived from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. These results reemphasize the concern that both the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets may be more sensitive to temperature than widely thought. Key Points The thermal expansion component of Last Interglacial sea level rise was small Antarctic Ice Sheets must have contributed 4.1 to 5.8 m of sea level rise Polar ice sheets may be sensitive to small changes in global temperature

The spatial domain of the Asian monsoon has been defined by the intensity, seasonal concentration, and annual range of precipitation. Monsoon subdomains, such as the Indian monsoon, East Asian monsoon, and western North Pacific monsoon, have also been identified based on seasonal wind reversals as well as the timing and source of monsoon moisture. However, precipitation across the Asian monsoon region is heterogeneous and spatially complex and may have influences farther north than commonly assumed, particularly if scientists consider records of past variability spanning the current interglacial period. This paper presents an additional means of identifying the Asian monsoon domain and monsoon subsystems using an empirical orthogonal function (EOF)-based regionalization of gridded precipitation values. Regions of unique precipitation variability for the Asian monsoon region are determined using monthly precipitation anomalies from the Climate Prediction Center Merged Analysis of Precipitation (CMAP) gridded precipitation dataset from 1979 to 2009. From these regions, an area of Asian monsoon influence extending from the Arabian Sea eastward to the western North Pacific Ocean is defined, similar to other studies. One key difference is that this region of monsoon influence penetrates farther north into the Tibetan Plateau and northern China. Thus, paleoclimate observations of wetter conditions in these northern arid regions may suggest an intensification of monsoon moisture, rather than a northward shift in the boundary of the monsoon. In contrast, the Arabian Peninsula, largely removed from monsoon precipitation today, likely saw a shift of monsoon influence inland earlier in the Holocene. Also identified are different subdomains of distinct precipitation variability in southeastern Asia, the western North Pacific, and the East Asian monsoon region of northeastern China that agree with previous studies. Not identified in the paper is a single Indian summer monsoon region. Instead, the Arabian Sea was found to have unique precipitation variability relative to the Indian subcontinent. Summers with enhanced precipitation over the Arabian Sea coincide with decreased summer precipitation in the western North Pacific. This relationship is likely a result of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-induced development of the Philippine Sea anticyclone. Local and remote sea surface temperatures were generally found to covary with regional precipitation, but not all regions respond similarly to the remote climate variability associated with ENSO. There is some evidence that the EOF-defined regions were stable through the Holocene, although additional regionalization analyses of paleorecords and model simulations of past precipitation variability are needed to reconstruct past regions of coherent precipitation variability.

The temperature history of the first millennium C.E. is sparsely documented, especially in the Arctic. We present a synthesis of decadally resolved proxy temperature records from poleward of 60°N covering the past 2000 years, which indicates that a pervasive cooling in progress 2000 years ago continued through the Middle Ages and into the Little Ice Age. A 2000-year transient climate simulation with the Community Climate System Model shows the same temperature sensitivity to changes in insolation as does our proxy reconstruction, supporting the inference that this long-term trend was caused by the steady orbitally driven reduction in summer insolation. The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.

In the future, Arctic warming and the melting of polar glaciers will be considerable, but the magnitude of both is uncertain. We used a global climate model, a dynamic ice sheet model, and paleoclimatic data to evaluate Northern Hemisphere high-latitude warming and its impact on Arctic icefields during the Last Interglaciation. Our simulated climate matches paleoclimatic observations of past warming, and the combination of physically based climate and ice-sheet modeling with ice-core constraints indicate that the Greenland Ice Sheet and other circum-Arctic ice fields likely contributed 2.2 to 3.4 meters of sea-level rise during the Last Interglaciation.